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[Message from S2S leader] – RETHINK AND REDEFINE THE VALUE OF EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
As a high school or college student, you might be constantly struggling with the question of “What am I interested in?”, “What extracurricular activities are fitting for me?”, “How do I even get into these clubs when the recruitment process always requires prior experience?”, “How do I get started if I don’t have any experience?” As a co-leader for Students to Service project, I realized that these are the problems and questions that have been haunting numerous students who are looking for opportunities to engage in extracurricular activities yet always struggle with knowing how and where to get started. Today I want to tell you about a story. I hope that this story will inspire you to take action, to discover your full potential, and to take risks to help you to gain more awareness of yourself, your inner talent, your passions. I hope that you will combine this passion, self-awareness, and talent to take action, to make an impact to this world, and to pursue your own dream, whatever it may be.
My story is a bit unique, different from a lot of people who are
currently living in Vietnam. I was born in Vietnam, lived there for 12
years, and came to the United States in 2007 with my brother. I was too
young to realize the impact of this decision on my future and how my
future might be shaped by this experience. In my mind, I was excited
about seeing the “America,” a dream land that people always dream of
travelling to. Yet, when I came to the US, I was totally disappointed to
realize how naïve and shortsighted I was to not see what I was getting
myself into. Vietnamese had a saying “Deaf people are not afraid of
guns” (Diec khong so sung). I was just like that. I was unaware of my
limitations in language. The last English class I took before moving to
the US was Let’s Go 2, barely enough to learn how to say hi, hello, and
some basic sentences in English. I cried on the first day of school
because I was upset, shocked, and quite disillusioned of what it means
to live my life in the other half of the world, where I felt dumbfounded
not being able to make any friend, speak with anyone, or understand
anything that other people are talking about. However, this level of
discomfort, stress, and frustration were the most incredible and
powerful propellers pushing me forward to study English laboriously
every single day. I can’t remember exactly how intensely I was studying
and translating hundreds of words everyday but I got through it. I
started to understand lessons in class after few weeks, mastered the
language after few months, and earned my first award in the US as the
“Most Outstanding Student” after less than 8 months of staying in the
US. This experience, of course, was laborious, unpleasant, distressing,
yet will always be one of the most remarkable milestones in my life as
it not only taught me about entrepreneurship – navigating the unknown
world with limited resources, self-motivation, perseverance, but also
about appreciation for what I have experienced and been through, for an
incredible learning opportunity, for the family that has always
supported me, and for the Vietnamese culture that I grew up in that
ingrained in me the values of hard work, humbleness, and resilience.
Going to high school, I was quite curious with what extracurricular activities are and why Americans tend to engage in them so much. This was quite a foreign concept to me. Hence, I started my journey of exploring this new world of “extracurricular activities” by joining Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps build homes for the struggling members in the society. I didn’t quite realize the importance of this one decision of trying out extracurricular activities until later when I look at how much I have changed since this experience. The first thing that made me excited about joining this project was the friends that I met. Some of them were just really friendly, nice, polite yet what surprised me the most were their stories about their passion in community service and how much work they have done consistently over the years to contribute to this organization. Most of them were still young yet they were incredibly active, full of energy, passion, and lively. Talking to them alone was enough to make me feel curious about local issues in the community that they were sharing and want to learn about it. As I listened to more stories like that, I related them to the memory of the teachers in my middle school class who patiently assisted me in every step I take to adapt to the new environment and quickly learn the language. This was quite inspiring, inspiring me enough to engage in more community service projects to learn more and continue meeting incredible people. This was the start of my passion in service, the start of my enthusiastic engagement in several clubs in high school and the start of many entrepreneurial projects, clubs that I organized and founded in high school and even now in college, such as IM Venture and S2S.
Beyond what people usually tell you about how participating in extracurricular activities help you build resume for college applications and job applications, I want to emphasize many overlooked important roles and benefits that extracurricular activities offer that people tend to forget and hence limit themselves from the possibilities of gaining these incredible benefits. I also encourage you to take risks, to sign up for activities outside of classroom to challenge yourself and learn about other skills that are not necessarily always learn-able inside classroom environment. Only when you actually lead a team, organize a project, work on something that you're somewhat unfamiliar with, your learning curve will be very steep and I am sure it will be a memorable and enriching ride.
1. Extracurricular activities help you discover yourself: who you are, what you value, what you love, what you hate, what make you jump up with excitement, what make you feel fulfilled in your life. Throughout the activities that I have involved in, I found a common theme in all across my activities- that I was passionate about youths, service, education, traveling, and entrepreneurship. I know what distinguished me is my ability to think innovatively, entrepreneurially, and to put those ideas into reality by taking immediate actions. Yet also realized some of my weaknesses and limitations along the way of executing several projects that encourage me to focus on learning and improving in the future to make myself better. These alone are incredibly valuable in my future career as I know that they will help me figure out what type of environment I want to work in, what skills I have that will help me become a valuable asset of a company, and what skills I need to focus on learning in classroom and outside of classroom to make myself better and stronger in the future. They also help me become more aware of why I think the way I do and to become more accepting and open to learn from others who also share different ideas and opinions based on their backgrounds and environments growing up.
2. Extracurricular activities help you develop a sense of fulfillment and appreciation for what you have in life. Becoming more aware of local issues encouraged me to take actions to make an impact in the society, to realize how serious the current issues are, and to figure out how I can contribute to relieving these issues as a community member. Through these projects I also developed deeper sense of appreciation of some of the privileges that I have, whether it is receiving a good education, having good upbringing from parents, and much more.
3. Extracurricular activities help you make incredible network friends who are passionate, diverse, talented, and supportive. Most of my closest friends who taught me most valuable lessons in life and helped me grow are the friends I formed from outside of class when I worked with them on some extracurricular projects. Everyone has something for me to learn from and working with them offers me an opportunity to learn from observing what other people do great at and how I can adopt some of those skills and incredible characters that they have. I have come across many talented and inspiring friends in life through organizing these projects and they have continued to fulfill my life with meaning and valuable lessons.
I hope that this little short story will inspire many of young audience of S2S to rethink about the importance of extracurricular activities beyond the resume boost and to take initiative and risk to venture outside of classroom to engage in them right at this moment. I hope that S2S will be a beneficial tool connecting students to extracurricular opportunities to give them valuable learning experience to discover themselves and realize their full potential. I want to redefine the mission of S2S as “empowering Vietnamese students to realize their full potential” by connecting them to enriching opportunities outside of classroom and I want to emphasize our core values of innovation, responsibility, and diversity. At S2S, we value passionate and enthusiastic individuals who might come in with little experience but a big heart and come out with more experience and even bigger passion. As part of S2S family, we teach our members to become innovative by giving them a free space to experiment with any idea that they have in mind under guidance and support of S2S co-leaders. We instill in our members a sense of responsibility in work. We recruit talents and diverse members from across Vietnam and even outside of Vietnam who share different interests and personalities. We form support, diversity, and lasting friendships. I hope that S2S, with the mission and values above, will be a reliable and enriching resource for Vietnamese youths to discover many valuable extracurricular opportunities that will allow them to grow tremendously into successful and talented future leaders of tomorrow.
P.S: If you’re looking for an opportunity to join a new entrepreneur project with lots of space for experimenting with ideas and a supportive and meaningful culture, join our S2S NEWS recruitment project by filling out this application before Jan 25th, 2015: http://goo.gl/forms/IQNnm7a9RB (More info on Students to Service fan page)
Thank you for reading this short story and I wish you best of luck and success with your academic and career endeavors! Happy New Year 2015.
Most sincerely,
Tuongvan Le,
S2S Co-leader.
Going to high school, I was quite curious with what extracurricular activities are and why Americans tend to engage in them so much. This was quite a foreign concept to me. Hence, I started my journey of exploring this new world of “extracurricular activities” by joining Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps build homes for the struggling members in the society. I didn’t quite realize the importance of this one decision of trying out extracurricular activities until later when I look at how much I have changed since this experience. The first thing that made me excited about joining this project was the friends that I met. Some of them were just really friendly, nice, polite yet what surprised me the most were their stories about their passion in community service and how much work they have done consistently over the years to contribute to this organization. Most of them were still young yet they were incredibly active, full of energy, passion, and lively. Talking to them alone was enough to make me feel curious about local issues in the community that they were sharing and want to learn about it. As I listened to more stories like that, I related them to the memory of the teachers in my middle school class who patiently assisted me in every step I take to adapt to the new environment and quickly learn the language. This was quite inspiring, inspiring me enough to engage in more community service projects to learn more and continue meeting incredible people. This was the start of my passion in service, the start of my enthusiastic engagement in several clubs in high school and the start of many entrepreneurial projects, clubs that I organized and founded in high school and even now in college, such as IM Venture and S2S.
Beyond what people usually tell you about how participating in extracurricular activities help you build resume for college applications and job applications, I want to emphasize many overlooked important roles and benefits that extracurricular activities offer that people tend to forget and hence limit themselves from the possibilities of gaining these incredible benefits. I also encourage you to take risks, to sign up for activities outside of classroom to challenge yourself and learn about other skills that are not necessarily always learn-able inside classroom environment. Only when you actually lead a team, organize a project, work on something that you're somewhat unfamiliar with, your learning curve will be very steep and I am sure it will be a memorable and enriching ride.
1. Extracurricular activities help you discover yourself: who you are, what you value, what you love, what you hate, what make you jump up with excitement, what make you feel fulfilled in your life. Throughout the activities that I have involved in, I found a common theme in all across my activities- that I was passionate about youths, service, education, traveling, and entrepreneurship. I know what distinguished me is my ability to think innovatively, entrepreneurially, and to put those ideas into reality by taking immediate actions. Yet also realized some of my weaknesses and limitations along the way of executing several projects that encourage me to focus on learning and improving in the future to make myself better. These alone are incredibly valuable in my future career as I know that they will help me figure out what type of environment I want to work in, what skills I have that will help me become a valuable asset of a company, and what skills I need to focus on learning in classroom and outside of classroom to make myself better and stronger in the future. They also help me become more aware of why I think the way I do and to become more accepting and open to learn from others who also share different ideas and opinions based on their backgrounds and environments growing up.
2. Extracurricular activities help you develop a sense of fulfillment and appreciation for what you have in life. Becoming more aware of local issues encouraged me to take actions to make an impact in the society, to realize how serious the current issues are, and to figure out how I can contribute to relieving these issues as a community member. Through these projects I also developed deeper sense of appreciation of some of the privileges that I have, whether it is receiving a good education, having good upbringing from parents, and much more.
3. Extracurricular activities help you make incredible network friends who are passionate, diverse, talented, and supportive. Most of my closest friends who taught me most valuable lessons in life and helped me grow are the friends I formed from outside of class when I worked with them on some extracurricular projects. Everyone has something for me to learn from and working with them offers me an opportunity to learn from observing what other people do great at and how I can adopt some of those skills and incredible characters that they have. I have come across many talented and inspiring friends in life through organizing these projects and they have continued to fulfill my life with meaning and valuable lessons.
I hope that this little short story will inspire many of young audience of S2S to rethink about the importance of extracurricular activities beyond the resume boost and to take initiative and risk to venture outside of classroom to engage in them right at this moment. I hope that S2S will be a beneficial tool connecting students to extracurricular opportunities to give them valuable learning experience to discover themselves and realize their full potential. I want to redefine the mission of S2S as “empowering Vietnamese students to realize their full potential” by connecting them to enriching opportunities outside of classroom and I want to emphasize our core values of innovation, responsibility, and diversity. At S2S, we value passionate and enthusiastic individuals who might come in with little experience but a big heart and come out with more experience and even bigger passion. As part of S2S family, we teach our members to become innovative by giving them a free space to experiment with any idea that they have in mind under guidance and support of S2S co-leaders. We instill in our members a sense of responsibility in work. We recruit talents and diverse members from across Vietnam and even outside of Vietnam who share different interests and personalities. We form support, diversity, and lasting friendships. I hope that S2S, with the mission and values above, will be a reliable and enriching resource for Vietnamese youths to discover many valuable extracurricular opportunities that will allow them to grow tremendously into successful and talented future leaders of tomorrow.
P.S: If you’re looking for an opportunity to join a new entrepreneur project with lots of space for experimenting with ideas and a supportive and meaningful culture, join our S2S NEWS recruitment project by filling out this application before Jan 25th, 2015: http://goo.gl/forms/IQNnm7a9RB (More info on Students to Service fan page)
Thank you for reading this short story and I wish you best of luck and success with your academic and career endeavors! Happy New Year 2015.
Most sincerely,
Tuongvan Le,
S2S Co-leader.
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